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DISCOURSE 

IN MEMORY OF OUR LATE PRESIDENT, 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, / A . 



DELIVERED IX THE 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, HOLLISTON, MASS., 



THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1865, 



By J. T. TUCKER, 

PASTOR . 



IIOLLISTOX : 

DP T- I TSjT f t o kt sz c l .a. :e, k: 

1865. 



DISCOUKSE 



IN MEMORY OF OUR LATE PRESIDENT, 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



DELIVERED IX THE 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, HOLLISTON, MASS. 



THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1865, 



By J. T. TUCKER. 

PASTOR. 



HOLLISTON : 
PLIMPTON Ss C L -A. H IK . 

1865. 




,8 



NOTE. 



Fully satisfied as I am of the justness of the conclusions reached in this 
discourse, my purpose in giving it to the public is not so much to declare 
my own individual opinions, as thus to become the medium of expressing 
the judgment, on our present affairs, of a large number of intelligent 
and influential hearers, by whose request these pages are sent to the 
press. 



J . T . TUCKEK, 



I.AWNSIDE, 

Hollistoii, 

June 5th, 



DISCOURSE. 



LAMENTATIONS 4: 20. 
"THE BREATH OF OUR NOSTRILS, THE ANOINTED OF THE LORD, WAS 
TAKEN IN THEIR PITS, OF WHOM WE SAID, UNDER HIS SHADOW WE 
SHALL LIVE AMONG THE HEATHEN." 

In these mournful strains, the Hebrew prophet and poet 
bewailed the captivity of the last of the kings of Judah, ta- 
ken captive by his enemies and carried sightless and chained 
like a slave or a wild beast, to Babylon. That fallen prince 
had brought this heavy judgment upon his own head, by his 
abominable crimes. Yet, though he had proved himself so 
utterly unworthy the lineage and crown of David, the proph- 
et chants his requiem as the selected chief magistrate of the 
Jewish land, the Anointed of the Lord as the ruler of the 
people, set up by Providence as the great rock under the 
shadow of which the nation should dwell, in dignity and safe- 
ty, among its neighbors. His throne, his kingdom, his life 
had paid the penalty of his sins : but the man of God drops 
a tear at his memory, as the son of Jesse wept over Saul — 
the beauty of Israel slain upon its high places. If, then, the 
Spirit of inspiration has sung such elegies over the great, 
bad princes of the people, how justly may we repeat them, 
as to day we mourn the loss and honor the name of our great, 
good President: "The breath of our nostrils, the Anointed 
of the Lord, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, under 
his shadow we shall live among the nations."* 

We assemble at this hour, under a proclamation sent forth 

* The words, heathen and nations, were used interchangeably by the'carlv 
Jews. All other nations, ethnoi, to them were heathen, v. lxx. in loco. 



to all the loyal people of this Republic, by its present Exec- 
utive, summoning us to a memorial service for him, the late 
occupant of that high station, so ruthlessly cut off in the 
midst of his days. In the first gush of our sorrow and our 
indignation because of this atrocity, we waited not for any 
official prompting to pour forth our grief in tremulous, glow- 
ing words of mingled emotion, as the irrepressible bidding 
of our hearts draped our homes and our sanctuaries in the 
weeds of a national funeral. Let no one say that those man- 
ifestations of regret, of anguish were premature, were super- 
ficial. Every day of the interval since elapsed has only jus- 
tified and strengthened them. If space gained for reflection 
upon that awful deed of shame has begun to disclose in what 
ways an overruling Providence can turn it to good account 
in our future career, this does not go a hair's breadth toward 
changing our feelings, then first spontaneously expressed, con 
cerning our common bereavement and its unutterably wick- 
ed cause. It is well, that, after these weeks of meditation 
and observation, we are drawn again, in this formal manner, 
to a reviewal of God's recent dealing with us. The annals 
of our country furnish one close historical parallel to the pres- 
ent occasion. When our first President died, than whom 
scarcely any mortal man was ever more venerated and belov- 
ed by millions, the Congress of the original States requested 
his successor to recommend, by proclamation, "to the people 
of the United States to assemble, on the twenty-second day 
of February next, in such numbers and manner as may be 
convenient, publicly to testify their grief for the death of 
General George Washington, by suitable eulogies, orations, 
and discourses, or by public prayers." How that day was 
solemnized, some among us still recollect. It is equally, and 
I will venture to say, it is even more fitting, that this nation 
to-day build up a monument of honest, truthful words com- 
memorative of our last great chief, which shall also help to 
keep his virtues, and his noble quarrel with gigantic wrong, 
fresh and fragrant in the memories of our children, and our 
children's children. 



If the labor which we thus assume be difficult, it is not 
because the subject in itself is either intricate or obscure. 
Within the whole range of my historical reading, I know of 
no public character more thoroughly transparent, more read- 
ily understood than that of our late President. From the 
first advent of Mr. Lincoln on the political stage, until the 
curtain dropped so suddenly, he carried his heart (so to 
speak) pinned upon his sleeve, where every one could see 
it, just as it was from day to day. He had no concealments. 
Every step which he took in his political education became 
the public property almost as soon as he became aware of it 
himself. There is a most unusual simplicity about his life — 
almost a child's life to the last, yet in the manliest propor- 
tions. This makes it no easy thing to speak rightly and in- 
telligently of this mightier than kingly potentate, who wield- 
ed more than the power of a Louis XIV, with the artless 
rectitude, the child-like directness, of an Edward VI. 

And this was an anomaly in the nineteenth century. By 
reason of bad examples and sophistical theorizings, the idea 
of state-craft has come to be mainly localized in the last half 
of that suggestive word. Statesmanship has degenerated 
into state-cunning, has become the science of finesse, the 
art of looking one way and rowing another, like the water- 
man whose face is always the reverse of his progress. But 
Abraham Lincoln always looked and rowed in the same direc- 
tion. And men whose political school had taught them only 
the game of hide and seek, could not comprehend his open, 
plain-spoken policy. Surely, there was a change from the 
White House atmosphere of eighteen hundred fifty-three and 
nine, to that of eighteen hundred sixty-one and five. It was 
like getting out of the dim and cob-webbed crypts of an 
Egyptian pyramid up to the pnre air and free vision of its 
glorious summit. 

The nation felt it, and loved and honored the man who had 
taken off the stricture from their lungs, the bandage from 
their eyes. It is a grand thing to look at — how heartily the 



millions will rally around a leader who shows himself worthy 
of their trust. They have been cheated so often and so bit- 
terly, from the days of Saul to the last Napoleon, that you 
would think they never would venture again to confide over 
much in a new candidate for their reliance. But they will, 
where they see their way. Modern history gives no finer 
instance of this than the record of our last four years. Mr. 
Lincoln had won the hearts of the loyal citizenship of this 
Republic so absolutely, that he was the personal friend as 
well as the lawful chief magistrate of his constituents. It 
was their willing tribute, not to brilliancy of mind or pro- 
foundness of statesmanly acquirements, but to genuine good- 
ness. Two words might fitly grace his monument — the 
Beloved and the Trusted. "Were not this a royal epitaph? 

The seed of this character was in a peculiarly fortunate 
combination of constitutional qualities : it was as fortunately 
guarded and nourished by the circumstances of his early life. 
That Western home, so free from the dwarfing influences of 
artificial mannerisms, from the cramping power of a false re- 
finement, was just the place to develop a muscular body, and 
as muscular and masculine a soul. He was poor enough to 
be compelled to work hard, to plan closely, for a position in 
life. But there were no overgrown lords of the soil or of 
society to crowd the growing nature into deformity. The 
young man made his way up into notice against such obsta- 
cles as are common and largely unavoidable in a new country. 
A rough life it is, but a wholesome one. It did not give him 
the finish of a university training, nor did it corrupt his spir- 
it with chicanery, duplicity, selfish ambition or vicious tastes. 
Abraham Lincoln's first twenty-five or thirty years were very 
much like George Washington's, in their demand for self- 
reliance. And they fostered substantially the same manly 
probity and purity. 

A few years include all that history will claim of Mr. Lin- 
coln's career. Within a decade his name begun to meet our 
eye in the public journals, as a shrewd, popular, self-educated 



Illinois attorney, who was taking the field as a political antag- 
onist of slave-extension in our country. Since then, his life 
has been a unit in its purpose, law and end. He entered the 
lists against the institution of slaveiy because, from boyhood, 
he had believed it to be morally and politically wrong : true, 
in this, to the traditions of his ancestors, who, three genera- 
tions before, were Pennsylvania Quakers. Made a member 
of the national House of Representatives in 1847, he stood 
squarely with the friends of freedom through all the various 
skirmishes and battles of those years of Southern pride and 
power. But he was not a radical in his creed. While op- 
posing unflinchingly every extra-constitutional grant to South- 
ern principles, he evermore contended for the fulfilment of 
whatever legally could be claimed by the slave-system. In 
his great campaign against Mr. Douglas in 1858 for a seat in 
the U. S. Senate, which, though it gained him not that honor, 
made him our President in 1860, he uniformly abjured the 
right of interference with slavery in the existent slave-states, 
and refused to counsel the popular resistance of the odious 
Fugitive Slave-bill. Utter and uncompromising resistance 
by all constitutional and peaceful measures to the enlarge- 
ment of the area and powers of slavery — was his one-planked 
platform, and this on moral as well as economical grounds. 
He knew, as he knew his own personal identity, that slavery 
was hostile, and would be fatal, if allowed to be, to the na- 
tional life. That was motive enough, for a true patriot like 
him, to regard it as a public and common enemy. 

But Mr. Lincoln entered upon his presidential career with 
no settled purpose of slavery-extermination. He could not 
as an honest man. The millions of free citizens had not elect- 
ed him for that object, much as the mass of them might have 
desired this result. He took his oath of office to hold 
the Republic safe and intact against all foes. He was put 
in trust of this by the people of the land who love it as their 
home ; and his heart and head had taught him the duties of 
a trustee, for one — for myriads of men. Had the Republic 



been imperrilled by a foreign invader, he would have set its 
whole strength in motion to repel the assault. Had Massa- 
chusetts attempted rebellion and secession, or all the North 
combined in such unholy treason, that oath which he had 
sworn would have fulfilled itself as promptly and impartially 
upon New England rebellion as it did on Southern secession. 
Mr. Lincoln was no respecter of persons or sections. He 
had no idea, when he took his official seat at Washington, 
that he was entering on a war-administration. He under- 
stood something of Southern malice and treachery, and he 
was willing to risk it. But he did mean to govern the coun- 
try — all of it — fairly, evenly, firmly, kindly, whatever might 
come. That was his business as "the Anointed of the Lord." 
And he did it. 

Knowing, of course, that he was made President by North- 
ern votes, he knew just as well that the withdrawal of the 
Southern vote was simply the result of that section's self- 
will, for which he was not responsible. This, however, would 
have made no difference with the status of those States un- 
der his administration, if they had behaved even no better 
than we did under the Southern usurpation, for that is its true 
name, of his immediate predecessor. Who believes that 
Abraham Lincoln would have harmed a hair of their heads, 
if the slave-holders had kept quiet within their constitution- 
al and political strong-holds? Can any body conjecture the 
struggles and the sufferings of that man of more than wom- 
anly kindliness, when the oath, which he had sworn before the 
God who gave him the sword of government, compelled him 
to unsheathe it, and year upon year to bathe it in the blood 
of self-outlawed men and enemies, even to its dripping hilt. 
God only knows what a work that man has been conscience- 
driven to execute, as it had to be shaped consciously and 
experimentally in his own soul: and this, against the plead- 
ings of his own natural pity, against the peaceful tendencies 
and sentiments of a progressive Christian civilization, against 
every thing human and divine, save that most humane and 



sacred duty of preventing a gigantic conspiracy of treason 
and of wickedness from doing the very thing for our Repub- 
lic which it did succeed, in an evil hour, in doing for its hon- 
ored head. The President prevented the assassination of 
the nation. He could not prevent his own. The men, who 
were foiled by him in the first crime, accomplished in the 
madness of their disappointment, the second. 

This tragic extinguishment of that good man's life puts the 
entire cause which compassed it, in its true historic position, 
from which no special pleading will avail to remove it, to the 
end of days. If any one shall wish to know, in remotest 
centuries, what kind of a mutiny this Southern outbreak was 
against all right reason and justice and honor, he will find his 
indisputable answer in the murder at Washington on Friday 
night, the 14th of April last. That was the condensation and 
eruption of the smothered volcanic fire. Mr. Lincoln had 
gradually been obliged to understand that the South would 
go all lengths in fighting through its disunion-creed. He saw 
what they had done in the deliberate atrocities of battle-fields 
and prisons. That they would ever go to the extreme guilt 
of taking his own life, his generous soul never fully could 
accredit, though he was aware of not a few plottings of this 
sort against him. But, as he brought one force after another 
to crush this armed revolt, and saw that still it lifted its de- 
fiant front as proudly, he reached at length the point of a full 
conviction, that the disloyal confederacy could never be sub- 
jugated save by a deadly blow struck into its very heart — 
the slave-system — for which it was fighting by its own plain- 
est avowals, and which was its vital-blood. Mr. Lincoln had 
no more intention of issuing the Emancipation-proclamation 
in 1861, than he had of being shot in 1865. But he was will- 
ing to set every slave free if the Union could not be saved 
without it. That he had sworn to do, if done it could be. 
When he had tried all else to effect it, he let slip the one last 
thunderbolt. He did it, not because as a man he was anti- 
slavery in sentiment, not because he was ready to use his 



10 

public power to break up what he knew was unutterably evil 
and troublesome, that he might so gratify the compassion of 
his own nature or the wishes of partizans, or gain applause 
from spectators abroad, or win a proud name in history. He 
signed his name to that great charter of African freedom, as 
a necessary military measure to destroy the Southern Con- 
federacy. Had he done it for any other reason, he would 
have gone outside of his presidential oath. Had he not done 
it for this, he would have stood condemned, at the bar of 
humanity, for official delinquency. He saved the integrity 
of American liberty and nationality by that heroic act. 
Again the pen has been mightier than the sword. He sealed 
his testimony with his blood. But think you that this blood 
will have stained the earth in vain ? Did the martyrs' ? 
Look around you and answer. 

A man's real character can not be studied apart from his 
public deeds. It must be confessed that sometimes a wide 
discrepancy appears between the private and the official as- 
pects of an individual life. We see very little of this in the 
late President. His personal truthfulness and good nature 
interfused whatever he did. There used to be some vague 
echo of a rumor floating in the air, that Mr. Lincoln was a 
tyrant. No one could say it now without the risk of being 
very justly classed as sympathising with the miserable stage- 
player, whose attempt thus to dramatize his horrid crime was 
as futile as was his subsequent effort to escape the justice of 
God. The man never breathed who was farther from vindic- 
tive promptings than this victim of political revenge. Almost 
the last thing which he did was to permit, by telegraph, the 
flight from the country of a party of rebel chiefs. Had he 
lived, Mr. Davis would never have had his mock dignity 
smothered beneath the ridicule of a feminine arrest by a mil- 
itary police. His flight to a foreign obscurity would never 
have been hindered. How well nigh impossible it was to 
procure the presidential consent to a death-sentence by court- 
martial, has become proverbial. Says Mr. Speaker Colfax, 



11 

in his Chicago oration: "No man, in our era, clothed with 
such vast power, has ever used it so mercifully. No ruler, 
holding the keys of life and death, ever pardoned so many 
and so easily. When friends said to him they wished he had 
more of Jackson's sternness, he would say, ' I am just as 
God made me, and can not change.' It may not be generally 
known that his door-keepers had standing orders from him 
that no matter how great might be the throng, if other Sen- 
ators and Representatives had to wait, or to be turned away 
without an audience, he must see before the day closed every 
messenger who came to him with a petition for the saving 
of life. One night in February I left all other business to 
ask him to respite the son of a constituent, who was sent- 
enced to be shot at Davenport, for desertion. He heard the 
story with his usual patience, though he was wearied out 
with incessant calls, and anxious for rest, and then replied : 
' Some ot our Generals complain that I impair discipline and 
subordination in the army, by my pardons and respites, but 
it makes me rested, after a day's hard work, if I can find 
some good excuse for saving a man's life, and I go to bed 
happy, as I think how joyous the signing of my name will 
make him and his family and his friends.' And with a happy 
smile beaming over that care-furrowed face, he signed that 
name and saved that life." Think you he could have author- 
ized such a treatment of rebel prisoners as was deliberately 
planned and sanctioned by the phlegmatic Jefferson Davis 
and the chivalric General Lee ? It is time that the Northern 
people should cease to talk about the high and honorable 
spirit of this latter author of our brave soldiers' inhuman 
privations at Richmond, where his military word was always 
omnipotent. If tyranny needs modern illustrations, let no 
one stop till he gets to the James River. There was not a 
vestige of it in the heart of our noble chief. 

Some doleful censor has compared Mr. Lincoln's indulgence 
in story-telling and a genial laugh to Nero's fiddling, up in 
that little grim tower, while Rome was burning. Verily, the 



12 

running of historical parallels is " a sharp razor working 
deceitfully " in not a few hands. Our President's humor was 
as natural as his pulse. It never could have welled up so 
sweetly and richly from a despot's breast. It was not levity. 
It betokened no indifference to his country's woes. It was 
often coupled with a seriousness too deep for tears. But for 
this escape-valve for his overworked, wearied, aching sensi- 
bilities and energies, he used to say that he should die. Who 
can not see it? And besides — this was the normal working 
of his mind. A confidential friend of his told me that Mr. 
Lincoln never reached an intellectual judgment by slow pro- 
cesses of inductive reasoning and argument. He took in a 
thought, and let it steep and simmer in his brain, holding it 
there in solution while engaged with men and affairs, in the 
usual round of work. Often, he would draw around him a 
pleasant company and spend an evening, in seemingly a com- 
plete abandon to the whim or pastime of the hour. But, the 
next morning he was ready, with a clear head and a sound 
heart, to pen a proclamation or issue an order charged with 
the weightiest consequences. Thomas Carlyle has a remark 
somewhere, that a man who cannot laugh sometimes, not 
merely with a muffled chuckle, as if through a cotton-cushion, 
but from the very depths of his being, is not capable of sal- 
vation. Without going the whole length of the essayist, it 
is certain that our beloved President was all the better and 
the happier, amidst those days of darkness, for this geniality 
of his temperament. The people understood it, and enjoyed 
the wit and the wisdom which, like the oil on Aaron's beard, 
flowed down to the skirts of the garments. 

The people understood more than this. They felt that 
there was, at the head of the government, a thoroughly hon- 
est man. It was not that kind of Poor Richard honesty 
which is only the best policy. It was an honesty which 
feared God. What commended itself, at first, as a lofty 
moral conscientiousness, had taken on, at length, the pro- 
founder depth of a religious affection. What had long ap- 



13 

proved itself as doing justly and loving mercy, had manifestly 
advanced to the loftier eminence of walking humbly with its 
God. There was no cant nor pretension about this, but a 
sedate, fixed,- impressive reality in it which everybody felt 
and reverenced. God had given him a task to do, and the 
soul of an unusual Christian manhood with which to do it. 
Unselfish as a person can be and not hate his own flesh ; self- 
sacrificing beyond living comparison, for the public good; 
humble as a child, and as ingenuous ; humane in all his in- 
stincts and principles ; careless of unpopularity when risked 
for the true and the right ; never tempted to angry outbreaks 
in word or act ; forgiving his enemies, yea and loving them 
tenderly in their worst excesses of wrath and guilt ; divine 
Providence seems to have created and trained him for his 
appointed work ; and when, like a good and faithful servant 
he had finished it, God, who had kept him immortal till that 
work was done, suffered him to fall in death by just the 
stroke which should brand with eternal shame the rebellion 
which he had crushed ; which should hand him down to his- 
tory with the splendor of his public glory made yet more 
beautiful by the personal love and sympathy of the purest 
souls that live, or shall live until the close of time. 

It is not for me, or any one, to say that President Lincoln 
committed no errors of judgment in the course of his admin- 
istration, nor that he was faultless as a man. That were to 
be more than human. Whatever were his executive mistakes 
he can afford to have deducted from his credits. The wonder 
is, that, in the unexampled embarrassments of his govern- 
ment, those mistakes were so few. Other presidential terms, 
in no uncommon difficulties, have been hardly else than one 
long blunder, if not crime. His was the herculean task of 
creating a military and naval po,wer out of a wholly commer- 
cial and industrial nation, and to fit it with warlike resources 
equal to the conquest of one half the republic which had 
been organizing for rebellion during a quarter of a centu- 
ry ; all this with no notice and in the very presence of the 



14 

enemy actually besieging his capital. Did he, and his gener- 
als, and his cabinet do some unwise things ? Let writers and 
speakers criticize these, who have no sight to see approvingly 
that the Washington, which to-day is free from Southern usur- 
pation and bondage, free in its Congressional halls, its Su- 
preme and local courts, its executive mansion, its social life, 
was, fonr years ago, a very nest of treason and outlawry ; 
that the vast domain of the new territories is forever barred 
against slavery ; that the area of this huge rebellion has been 
rescued from the same curse ; that the project of secession 
and Southern empire is wrecked ; that we have conquered 
the hosts of the oppressor, taken his fortresses and cities, 
broken up his government, ruined all his unrighteous projects, 
captured the ringleaders of the accursed crusade, whom we 
are holding for trial under the charge of high treason. They, 
who find no pleasure in all this vindication of justice, may 
still employ their valueless time in showing up the President's 
weak points. We are far from saying that our almost mirac- 
ulous success is wholly due to his labors. First of all and 
ever, we give praise unto God who has wrought these 
mighty works among us. Next, we are content with Mr. 
Bancroft's words ; " Those who come after us will decide 
how much of the wonderful results of Mr. Lincoln's career 
is due to his own good common sense, his shrewd sagacity, 
readiness of wit, quick interpretation of the public mind, his 
rare combination of fixedness and pliency, his steady tend- 
ency of purpose ; how much to the American people, who, 
as he walked with them side by side, inspired him with their 
own wisdom and energy." History is a safe depository for 
genuine goodness and greatness. And this to-day is American 
history — that our republic "is cast into another mould" from 
what it was when Mr. Lincoln delivered his first inaugural, and 
that "the gigantic system of wrong, which had been the work 
of more than two centuries,is dashed down, we hope, forever."* 
What ruler, through the ages, has left a worthier record ? 

* Hon. George Bancroft's Oration in New York, April, 1865. 



15 

The topic is alluring, but it is time for its concluding sug- 
gestions. Our annals are enriched with another rare model 
for youthful study and imitation, second only to that of the 
Father of our nation, in all the catalogue of our public men. 
For a long time we have greatly needed such a model, to 
whom to point our youth as a pattern of the staunch, honest, 
frank, unselfish qualities of the American citizen of to-day's 
imperative want. We have it here ; and of none the less 
value because not haloed about with that aristocratic radiance, 
which made Washington the admiration of thousands who 
cared nothing for his virtues, but only for his gentle blood. 
Do not think that I undervalue this, so far as it possesses 
any value. But, just now, we need to put some tougher 
timber into our social and national structure. Reconstruction 
is the lesson for the day ; and while all graceful adornment 
should be saved for use and beauty, the under-pinning of our 
new life should not be made of plaster, nor its towers and 
arches be a frescoed counterfeit of solid stone and wood. 
Our nation wants a whole, immediate generation of honest, 
true, intelligent, straight-forward Abraham Lincolns : — if the 
genuine metal be within, who cares about the gilt glitter of 
the surface ? If there be anything to bear a polish, it will get 
it by and bye : but the less you brush gold leaf the better. 
Was Cicero proud, not that he had inherited but had made 
a renowned name ? Honor to the old Roman. He was so 
far forth, a New-England Puritan. Mr. Lincoln's self-made 
nobility was of a loftier patent than that of any Norman lord 
who to-day grinds the faces of England's poor. When his 
life shall have been worthily written, let it become the text- 
book of our generous youth, who would help to lift our na- 
tional character and name to the loftiest point of a manly and 
a Christian honor. 

Another view: Divine Providence is furnishing, through 
the progress and end of this rebellion, a more palpable 



16 

illustration of the self-defeating doom of enormous ini- 
quity, than history records since the crucifixion of our 
Lord. Every success which the South has won has been 
a defeat. Bull Run was the Bunker Hill of this war, where 
all that the enemy gained only roused and combined a thou- 
sand fold more vigorously the patriotic ardor of the land. 
Periodically almost, some invasion or fierce grapple, like the 
Pennsylvania raids or Virginia massacres, have seemed to be 
the only means of holding us to our hard warfare until the 
prize was won. But for the increasing hauteur of rebel good 
fortune, we should have compromised the quarrel two years 
ago, and lost everything which to-day, by dint of persevering 
against bitter disappointment, we firmly grasp. Did our 
guardian God thus spur us on to make clean work of extir- 
pating the giant heresy of the South ? We have been griev- 
ously annoyed and hampered by foreign sympathy with our 
foes ; have fretted that intelligent men abroad would not or 
could not comprehend the merits of our cause. And so it 
might have gone on, to the involving us in foreign war, had 
not the great Ruler permitted this conspiracy of oppression 
and sedition to explain itself to the universe by the assassin- 
ation of our President. That deed of blood has opened the 
eyes of the world to the true nature of the adversary which we 
are throttling. What did the rebel sympathizers abroad 
say when the strange news thrilled with horror the heart of 
Europe ? With one loud cry, the organs of that sympathy 
said that the responsible heads of the Southern Confederacy 
must disavow and reprobate the murder, on pain of forfeiting 
the respect of every person there who was not infamous. 
A British peer of that side predicted, from his place in par- 
liament, that the next steamer would assuredly bring over a 
universal outburst of condemnation, from the South, of 
Booth's nefarious act. The London Times demanded, with 
a well-set scowl of rebuke, that the South should wash its 
hands of the crimson stain. Has it been done ? Not a begin- 
ning of it. Even Mr. Mason's weak disavowal, compelled by 



17 

public decency, has found no echo from a rebel statesman 
or newspaper or convention that I have heard of. The 
spirit of the rebellion sanctions it, and of course can not 
eschew it. Mr. Davis even is not capable of the hypocrisy 
which such a disclaimer would require. He knows that such 
a falsehood would be a waste of words ; that no one would 
believe his assertions, who understands this subject. Did 
he, does he know, that evidence is in the hands of our gov- 
ernment which will prove him to have been an accomplice, 
before the fact, in this plot of damnable guilt? I believe 
that he knows precisely so much. I do not wonder that his 
knees tremble like Belshazzar's, and that the bitterness of a 
felon's death is beginning to drink up his spirit. 

What is thus putting its finishing blot on this Southern 
iniquity, to our convictions, will speedily consign it to a like 
detestation the world over. Into the pit which they digged 
have they themselves fallen. And it is bottomless. Their 
sin has found them out. The wicked is snared in his own 
devices. What a termination of self-confounded wrong ! 
We thought, on the 15th of April, that the last scene of this 
revolt of barbarism against civilization, would live in memory 
as a superlatively tragic tableau, electrifying posterity with 
a sense of awful terror. But, as if Providence would take 
out of it even this attraction of sublime guilt, would make 
this four years mutiny against righteousness and mercy as 
ridiculous as it is criminal — lo ! the flitting across the stage 
of that oddly " questionable shape." Why could not the 
arch traitor have died on the spot, like a man ? Almighty 
justice would not permit him to throw even so much false 
glory around a cause so vile. He must go down the ages, 
laughed at for his cowardly foolishness, as well as reprobated 
for his crimes. The Southern Confederacy of secession, 
oppression, rebellion, has found its definition, for all time, in 
the bloodiest of tragedies, and the most grotesque of farces. 

Again : The Sovereign of us all is teaching us a lesson of 
the sacredness of legitimate government, and the necessity of 



18 

executing its sanctions. The enormity of the assassination of 
our President lies not, after all, in his personal qualities as a good 
ruler, nor in the justness of the cause for which he fell a victim. 
That blow took effect on the man elevated by constitutional 
methods to the supreme magistracy of this nation, and thus 
made a " minister of God " to execute justice and administer 
authority, as his representative so far forth, in the land. 
Government thus set up is literally a Divine ordinance. Its 
head is the Lord's anointed, as really as was a David or a 
Solomon. This is substantially true, irrespective of the per- 
sonal qualities of the lawful incumbent of that office. To 
strike at him with murderous weapons is to fight against God 
in a most aggravated sense. 

And this defines the crime of high treason. It is a whole- 
sale attempt to destroy a nation's organic life. No crime 
can surpass it in guilt. This Southern rebellion is that crime 
in its superlative degree. It has dragged to its door, as their 
responsible author, all the woes and carnage, the sacrifice of 
life, and the promiscuous devastation, which have followed 
this Moloch of war, through four long years. And its leaders- 
ought to die. There is no reason why the assassin of the 
President should have expiated his act on the scaffold, had 
not the arrest of God made a quicker end of him, which does 
not equally, and more than equally, require that the heads 
of the Confederate government, civil and military, should 
thus pay the forfeit of their atrocious lawlessness. Our 
greatest weakness, in government, has been our remissness 
in exacting the penalties of the violation of law. Our legis- 
lation is good ; our neglect to enforce it is bad and suicidal. 
Our best friends abroad have remarked this habit of our 
country with deep concern. Now, we must turn a new leaf; 
and justice to the enemies of man must be its heading. We 
can not afford to let this conspiracy of traitors and assassins 
live. Their blood must vindicate the majest}'- of Jaw, in mer- 
cy to this nation and to the world. We are in charge, at this 
time, of the safe-keeping of that great barrier which is built 



19 

up of the penalties of the statute-book against the floods of 
outlawry ever threatening the public security. And we must 
hold that barrier firmly, sternly, in these days when " evil 
men and seducers are waxing worse and worse." 

It is not surprising that a class of anti-capital punishment 
philanthropists should already be pleading for the lives of 
these ring-leaders of rebellion, these accomplices in assassin- 
ation and promiscuous plots of Northern ravage and slaugh- 
ter. These persons are at least consistent with themselves 
in what I deem to be a violent departure from the truth. If 
that doctrine is to rule us, we may as well know it now as 
at any other time. Nor is it surprising that foreign 
presses, which have habitually traduced us, should now be 
volunteering their advice and remonstrances concerning our 
disposal of these rebel chiefs. As, however, we conquered 
our foe without their help, it is to be hoped that our rulers 
will have the self respect to decide this and all other matters, 
quite independently of such officious and really impertinent 
interference. Surely we are better qualified than they to 
adjudicate this question. They have blundered enough 
about our affairs, to put their opinions at a ruinous discount. 

This conclusion, with me, is the dictate of no personal 
feeling, for I sincerely pity the misguided men who have thus 
snared themselves in these meshes of iniquity. I devoutly 
pray that the Lord may have mercy on their souls. Two 
months ago, I thought that possibly a decree of exile forever 
from these shores might be a sufficient doom for their trea. 
son. I recall that opinion. That may do for subordinates, 
or a decree of perpetual disfranchisement here at home. 
But the authors of this rebellion, its voluntary heads, its 
representatives before the nations and the world — they 
must be made a solemn sacrifice to outraged righteousness, 
justice, mercy and truth. Humanity demands it, as God's 
own sentence against guilt like this. 

Finally : The vast difficulty of securing our present van- 
tage, in this conflict, should put the nation on its guard lest 



20 

it lose in peace what it has gained in war.* We have broken 
up the military power of the rebellion by hard fighting ; but 
now we shall have a more troublesome task — to hold the 
ground thus fairly won, in an upright, unswerving loyalty to 
these nobly asserted principles of free government. There 
is only one great interest which is in special danger. All 
other issues can be easily enough adjusted. But this chief- 
est of them all has a critical ordeal yet to pass. I do not 
allow myself to suppose that any thing valuable will be 
sacrificed to the prayers or threats or intrigues of the slave- 
party in these States. But that every thing conceivable will 
be tried to save that bad institution from a root and branch 
destruction, we clearly foresee. Providentially the seceders 
have been left to push on in their revolt to that final point 
where, deaf to all past offers of pardon, they have forfeited 
every right and claim to the restoration of any property 
which they have ever called their own. They may be thank- 
ful for what is given them ; they are entitled to nothing. 
With the loyal Southeners, the government can find a way 
to be just without leaving a root of that poison-tree which 
has nearly been the utter death of the Republic. All this is 
plain. Still, it is just as plain that Southern rights will soon 
begin to be talked about, meaning by that, the rights of the 
South to go on with its old slave-code. No lack of people 
or pens will there be to prove up the soundness of these pre- 
tensions, or ^at least, to mystify the public into vacillation 
and moral cowardice in asserting downright, simple equity 
on this question. Persistent and great as these efforts will 
be, I do not believe they will avail. But, " let him who 
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Sleepless vigil- 
ance is yet to be the price of our freshly and dearly bought 
freedom. Prepare yourselves, then, for a vigorous contro- 
versy on this whole subject. The worst of causes, as of 

* This and the next paragraph are introduced from the author's Fast 
Day sermon, April 13, 1865 ; which was requested for publication, but 
the next day's tidings absorbed all other interests. 



21 

criminals, will never want apologists. We have suffered too 
much to give an inch of ground here. If the administration 
needs instructions, it should have them, in a voice of millions, 
to make no terms legitimating slavery on American soil. 
The North should be a unit in this demand. The South saw 
fit to stake their entire cause at this point, making it the 
head and front of their offending. They have failed. Let 
them abide the consequences of their own madness. They 
have nobody to blame but themselves. 

Do not delude yourselves with the dream that the slave- 
system and spirit is so paralyzed and broken up that it will 
now die out in a few years, if left to itself. It will not, no 
more than idolatry died out of Canaan, no more than witch- 
grass will die out of your garden. It has got to be slain, 
by a sentence like that which hangs a murderer — "until it 
is dead, dead, dead." And now is the time to do it, in com- 
passion to the land which it has strewn with slaughtered 
heaps, and to the future which it must not curse with its evil 
power. 

Respected hearers, I have detained you longer than my 
wont, with these observations. But such a day comes only 
once in a life-time and may well secure a patient listening to 
its instructions. We look onward now, from our recent 
troubles and depressions, to a brightening future. It will 
bring new duties, cares, perils. May God help and keep us 
amidst them all ! Hear ye his word to the people. " If ye 
walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments and do 
them; Then I will give peace in the land, and ye shall 
lie down, and none shall make you afraid." 



